Budapest - The Thursday

Ok, let's get the incredulous looks and eye-rolling over with first: yes, I left Lorna in Scotland on Valentine's Day to spend a couple of nights with "the lads" in Budapest. Right. Let's say no more about it.

Unfortunately when I booked my bargain Ryanair £70 return tickets (including "priority boarding"...) I foolishly thought that a 9.05am flight from Prestwick would be easy to make on time, only travelling from Edinburgh and Scotland's travel infrastructure being so good. So, cut to 3am on the 14th of February to see me catching the night bus into Waverly to make the 3.30am bus to Prestwick, arriving at 5.30am. Any other way would have got me there after check-in had closed. I was vindicated when the bus passengers were more Hungarian than Scot. Still, plenty of time to check in and bask in the early morning light. Of WHSmith's fridge.

Priority boarding worked a treat. It was worth the £3 just to see the poor people being shunted out of my queue. See ya, suckers!

Calum was due to pick me up at 1.30pm in Budapest, so when Ryanair announced with a trumpet fanfare (really) that they were 25 minutes early and Calum's text revealed he would be a half hour late, this left me an extra hour in the airport to...well, hide. It was only once on Hungarian soil that I realised my complete lack of any knowledge of the language or culture, a combination which in many places can get you shot. Apparently blowing your nose then checking the hankie can get you kneecapped in Turkey, and wars have started in Eastern Asia over the "pull my finger" joke. I thought it safer to sit clutching my bag and avoiding eye contact for the time being. I guess international sign language was always available to me but hungry as I was, I just couldn't bring myself to point at a piece of pizza while rubbing my tummy and offering my wallet. Not only would that require three hands, what if he asked me whether I wanted a bag? It was unlikely he would reciprocate by rubbing the bag seductively while winking at me.

Calum arrived in time to save me from an international incident and set about showing me the city. Unexpectedly one of the highlights came a few moments later - the appropriately named (by me) "Porn Guy". Where some people were begging from the cars as they sat in traffic, and others tried with little success to sell flowers, Porn Guy had gone one further and was selling roadside dirty magazines. He was draped with them, hanging from strings round his neck, filling both hands and surrounding him in grubby piles. I would have taken a picture but traffic was flowing freely and Calum unkindly refused to reverse back up the dual carriageway.

We then spent a cultural, relaxing afternoon visiting some of the sights of central Budapest, including...


Heroes' Square

The Basilica of St.Stephen

The Chain Bridge

The Parliament, and also spent some time dwelling over

this Holocaust memorial on the banks of the Danube.

(I had decided to go all out on the tourist thing so clicked away with my nice new camera with carefree abandon. Then came home, deleted 80% of the guff and crowed over the ones I liked.)

Jon and Mark's journey from Toulouse to Paris to Munich to Budapest (makes me seem a little petty for moaning about the early bus, doesn't it?) had encountered fog, and after a short spell worrying they might not make it at all we learned they would actually be a couple of hours late, allowing Calum and I time to eat before picking them up. His Hungarian is very good after 4 years in the country which made me remarkably more confident, even smiling at waiters and visiting the toilet on my own.

Having collected them from the airport we headed back to Calum and Zsanett's flat, politely ignoring the bulldozer knocking down the house next door. That evening the five of us went to a very traditional little restaurant hand picked for its authenticity where we ate soup (very big in Budapest) followed by a stew with rice and roast vegetables. And pickled cucumber. Mark made the mistake of tasting his cabbage garnish first and was not allowed to forget it. Making tiny mistakes and getting hammered for it is a running theme when we get together, so much so it's a wonder anybody dares talk at all. Many beers later we returned home to sort out sleeping places, Zsanett having wisely gone to her Mum's for the duration to leave us to it.

I'll do the day 2 write up tomorrow. To rush it now would be a true injustice to a most enjoyable and surreal day. Until then you can read Jon's take on events here...>

Another Hogmanay

Having enjoyed reading Jon's teary, nostalgic stories of Christmas past, I decided some reminiscing of my own wouldn't be out of place.

Christmas for us was usually spent in Dundee where your enjoyment of the festive season was generally measured by how much food you could consume between dawn and dusk - not eating meant not enjoying and that would simply not be tolerated. From the bacon stuffed rolls which left your dressing gown smeared with butter grease and tomato sauce to the industrial vats of prawn cocktail, it was heaven for a 9 year old with an appetite. Indeed there is a well worn family story where Gillian, who could be relied upon to work herself up into a vomitus over-excited wreck on Christmas Eve, was only cured of her boke by the ingestion of two cheese and tomato pizzas.

Another lasting memory is of the organisation involved when squeezing four or five adults and up to six children, plus guests, in a cottage originally built to house a crofter and possibly his wife. Place mats were laid each meal time in the livingroom on every available horizontal surface. A middle spot on a table was nice as there was less chance of things ending up on the floor, or of one of the dogs helping you to finish. Seats near the fire were at a premium earlier in the day when the house had yet to heat up, but by evening the furnace blast meant that only the cat and dogs could get within a few feet of it. This gave them the best view of the (off) TV and a perfect vantage point from which to let off casual farts in the direction of your Vienetta and Ice Magic. Feeding aside, the sleeping and washing arrangements alone were impressive enough. Bunk beds and inflatable beds were frequent friends as you were given your place in the sleeping hierarchy.

We were a family who still did "turns" - I did a mean Margaret Thatcher impression, and once an optimal amount of alcohol had been consumed the various uncles and aunts from many generations would indulge in some music hall classics to pass the time. One advantage that we had over the Broons was a "television", but this was in the days when the war for children's minds was still being optimistically fought by parents who believed two things - 1) that family derived entertainment was more fun than Tiswas and 2) this was a fight which could still be won. We could debate if either, both or none of these is true but it won't help me in 1982.

Anyway. Hogmanay as a child was perhaps less exciting, barring the thrill of being allowed up late. Once or twice we were taken along to parties then put to bed before being "gently awoken" at early o'clock when it was time to go home. I would not wish this torture on any child and will try to avoid it with my own. Jon's blog reminded me of those first few "allowed out" New Years when the rules of social etiquette were still being learned, then ignored. Hogmanay evening would be spent touring the houses of...people we knew. Calling them all "friends" would be a bit false considering many of them I have never, and will never see again, but we knew enough "friendly people" to organise or instigate quite the tour of Tain. Traps would be laid for us, though; on arrival at Tower Gardens for example I would be presented with a generous basin of neat whisky from my host or hostess which would then be refilled at a pace Oliver Reed might have called "a bit much". It was all my teen male ego could do to drink them as fast as they were presented. But then later in the evening any of my visits to the toilet would be accompanied by sharp intakes of breath and some tut-tutting as I weaved my wibbly wobbly way past vases and display dinner services before engaging other guests in inappropriate conversation. These truly were "the good old days". As time went on Jon and I became less of the social butterfly type and concentrated more on becoming connoisseurs of witty stories, droll recollections and the contents of other people's drinks cabinets.

We also frequently set out to prove that the right amount of alcohol prevented hypothermia. When it's 2 in the morning, and snowing, and you've been drinking whisky since midday, and someone says to you, "Let's go down to the beach" you really should say "No." But the memories of running my hands through my hair to dislodge the ice only serve to celebrate the anti-freeze properties of The Famous Grouse.

So, tonight Lorna and I will hit Tain town centre again after all these years. We are attending the Hogmanay street party organised, I think, by the Tain Gala Association Ceilidh band, fireworks (one assumes) and home by 00:10 if all goes to plan...

Bike Week 2007

16th to 24th June 2007



So, get on your bike. More details here...>

Defying gravity

Defying gravity
Originally uploaded by tcatcarson

We spent some time at the park on Saturday, and Kit enjoyed his first swing! He laughed so much he got hiccups, which we took to be a good thing.
The park at Saughton is actually very good, lots to do and quite busy. It was let down by a broken bottle (and considering it was lying on the soft bark floor, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to break it) and the fact that someone seemed to have tried to set a swing on fire...